4 Mistakes to Avoid during a Dental Practice Transition: Part Two – Episode #639

Thinking about selling your dental practice but not sure where to start? On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Matt and Jake break down part two of the four common mistakes dentists make when selling their practice. They discuss the importance of early planning, the difference between usable and non-usable net worth, and the psychological shifts around spending in retirement. They highlight the need for clarity and purpose in transitioning out of ownership and encourage self-reflection, practical goal-setting, and a deep understanding of your personal values when considering a practice sale of alternative paths. Whether you’re considering a transition soon or planning for the future, this two-part series provides insights to help you navigate the process successfully. Listen to part one!

Check out the Dentist’s Guide to a Successful Practice Transition e-guide to help you walk through the key stages of a practice sale, the differences in potential buyers, personal tax and retirement implications, and key questions to ask yourself during the transition!

Related Readings

How To Prepare for a Successful Practice Transition

4 Mistakes to Avoid during a Dental Practice Transition: Part One – Episode #634

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors. We have a great show for you today where Jake Elm and I go over part two of the Transitions, episode. We did a part one a few weeks ago, and today, again, part two. Today we talk a lot about understanding your retirement readiness number and how that relates to kind of when and, and why and how to transition. Out of your practice. We also talk a lot about your understanding, your why, getting really clear as to, the purpose of why you’re selling or even thinking about selling or transitioning out of dentistry and selling your practice. We pose a lot of different questions. We give a lot of frameworks. As always, we hope it is valuable and helpful for you as you make these big decisions in your life, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Matt Mulcock: Welcome back, everybody to the Dentist Money Show. We’re, Jake, just so you know, I’m workshopping bringing back the introduction,

Jake Elm: Hmm. I love the

Matt Mulcock: yeah, I think we’re gonna maybe get back to that. Right now. We’re just gonna keep it casual, but I think we might get back to like, talk show hosts, like, welcome to the dentist. I don’t know.

Jake Elm: I always liked it. It’s kind of oddly comforting when you listen to a podcast a lot of times, which I’m sure there are listeners out there who, if you are one of these people, thank you for listening and being a repeat listener and always tuning in. We appreciate it, but there is something comforting about, man, I’m going to one of my favorite podcasts, and I hear that same thing at the beginning, almost sets you in the zone. Right? It’s like that, that what you just said, that old intro. I actually remember that. I have fond memories of that. It’s great.

Matt Mulcock: No, I, we’re gonna bring it back. I’m actually, we’ll give a peek behind the curtain. We’re, um, tease, I’ll just tease this. We’re we’re working on revamping the structure, maybe adding some music, some, some introduction stuff, like we’re gonna, we’re gonna revamp it over the next few weeks. maybe bring it back to some of the old flair of, again, having that intro. We obviously, we do it on 2 cents. We get a lot of comments about like, just like you said there were kind of like the consistency of the brand and like the show, like we know what we’re getting every time, so we’re

Jake Elm: My number one most listened to podcast is the Bill Simmons podcast. this is like my go-to when I’m mowing the lawn, doing whatever I’m doing right. This is my lit go-to podcast, and he has the same exact intro every time. It is music from. Oh, now I can’t even think of it. Oh, Pearl Jam. It’s just, it’s like a little song from the band, Pearl Jam.

Anyway, I’ve listened to that intro for years now. Weekly, for years. Anyway,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna do it. That is not what we’re talking about today. That was just our intro. you can tell we are still workshopping. we’re gonna jump in. Jake and I are here doing part two of the transitions discussion. Uh, Jake, this is actually very pertinent for me. Because this will have already happened by the time this show comes out. But at the time of recording, I’m going this weekend to, Arizona with Ryan to MD dib. Shout out Gracie Young and the MD crew. We love this crew and I’m speaking on this exact topic. I’m speaking for an hour about, selling your practice and transitions. So I’m gonna warm up here today. Hopefully you can get some ideas.

Jake Elm: Yeah. As advisors for dentists, it does feel like this topic. Comes up a lot, right? It is. It is a big topic. We always have, like, as part of our job, there’s always, I dunno, a list of maybe seven towen, 10 really pertinent, like, almost like universal financial questions that people ask all of the time that we need to be pretty fluent in, in those, and it feels like, okay, eventually, Mo, I mean, if you’re a practice owner, you are going to sell your practice at some point. It is, okay, well how do I sell my practice? When should I sell my practice? How should I execute this transition? That is a common tent poll question that we get off, and we outlined this in part one. You can go back and listen to that. It came out a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, this is a huge question that we get all the time.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it is, it’s huge. And it, it’s, it should be top of mind for, for dentists. Right. And, and as we talked about in the last one, like you said, if you haven’t listened. you don’t need to listen to it, to listen to get something out of this, but if, if you want to hear what we talk about on part one, yeah, we would suggest going back and listening to that. We talked more like nitty gritty stuff, um, kind of the numbers and all that. Um, today we’re gonna change it up a little bit or give the second part of this. We also did a webinar on this. we’ve done, yeah, both, both parts of the webinar. I lose track, Jake, but we’ve done both of those. That’s also on the website. So to your point, this is super critical and super. Like obvious why a dentist would be thinking about this so much. We believe, and we say this to dentists all the time, and we built our business around this, which is your practice is the main driver. It’s, it is the catalyst. It’s the engine of your, of your wealth, right, of your ability to build wealth. And so you should be thinking about this and as we said in the, in part one, and we’ll kind of go over this just, we’ll kind of like give a summary really quick of what we hit last time. But one of the main things we talked about last time was. Like how early and often you should be thinking about this, about this transition.

Jake Elm: Yeah. Me. I like, like you outlined, Matt, we put out a lot of content in regard to this question and this transition selling your practice and for a good reason, it is a huge decision you’re going to make. And so, uh, our hope with this content is to. More than anything, give you a framework for how to think about this, right? Every situation is going to be different. That’s why we have a job. Personal finance is very unique and selling your practice is unique. but hopefully our, you know, with our last podcast, our webinars and our podcast today, we just want to give a framework for how you should be thinking about this, when you should start thinking about this and how that’s going to work. So yeah, Matt, we can, we can do a quick recap on part one for those who didn’t

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake Elm: High level. I think that was a lot of what we talked about. What you do, what you can do to get your practice ready for a cell was a, was a big thing there. Like how, when should you start thinking about selling your practice? Spoiler alert. Pretty early on. Right? Like continuously

Matt Mulcock: As you buy it.

Jake Elm: Right As you buy it. Thinking about where, what exit you wanna be looking for. So we talked about, yeah, preparing your practice. One of the big mistakes is waiting too long to prepare. We got into that. Talked about being organized with all of your financials and documents and everything there in your practice. Again, that’s an evergreen thing, not only just for selling, but always just have your ducks in a row. Organization wise is is huge for not only selling your practice for a, but analyzing where it is currently. we talked about having the right team in place for this transition, right as CPA, an attorney, even a financial advisor. What else would you add there? Matt? What am I missing? For

Matt Mulcock: No, those are huge. Um, that, those, that’s it, right? We spend all of our time pretty much on those three areas. I like what you said, waiting too long, not having the right team and being unorganized. and then so yeah, we, we hit all those. I think we get into like the heavy stuff in part one today. I think the two main things we want to hit for this part two. Number one, something we’ve talked about a lot, probably the number one thing we’ve talked about is what is your financial independence number? What is your retirement readiness number? That this plays a huge role in this whole conversation because as we were saying, the practice is the main catalyst and driver of wealth.

I. It’s gonna be a huge factor in, or one of the biggest questions when it comes to transitioning out of dentistry or selling your practice is gonna be, well, are you ready to retire? Or ready, at least ready to make work optional. Like these two things go really hand in hand. And then I think the other thing we wanna spend a lot of time on, uh, Jake, you and I vibe very much on this topic, and I think we could talk for a long time on this, which is. Just getting really clear, and I guess we’ll flip this. One of the biggest mistakes we see dentists make is being unclear on their why, on their purpose. So those are the two kind of main things we want to outline today.

Jake Elm: Yes, that sounds great. Let’s start with that financial independence number. We can start from there. Then maybe get into some of the, the why and the lifestyle questions behind that. So yes, like you outline Matt, when you’re going to sell your dental practice or thinking about this getting out of it, one of the main questions that you do need to ask yourself is, okay if I do sell my practice, we talked about how much you can get for it on our, on our last podcast, right? So you like 80% of collections or like multiple of EBITDA if you’re selling to A DSO. But you need to determine, okay, if I sell this thing. Am I going to have enough money to either retire or make work optional or step into whatever the next phase of my life is going to be? You just need to kind of sit down with your spreadsheet, your numbers, and just figure out, okay, from just like a purely financial standpoint, is selling this beneficial to me? Does it get me to where I want to be at? Right. So that’s kinda what we wanna hit on.

Matt Mulcock: Post tax, post debt,

Jake Elm: Post tax, post that. Yeah, so we have, we have what we call, we’ve called in the past, like your total term, right? As we’ve, as we’ve done elements in that number in the past, you can call your financial independence number. It doesn’t really matter essentially what your retirement number is, right? Like what, how much net worth do you need to be able to step away from being terrified for not being able to work and still be able to sustain your lifestyle, right? That’s what we’re talking about with this financial independence number here,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it is purely a math equation,

Jake Elm: Purely a math

Matt Mulcock: Straightforward. How much wealth do you need to make work? Optional.

Jake Elm: Yep. So it’s pretty simple and pretty straightforward. Um, how it works is you take your asset, you take your net worth, and you divide it by what you spend every year, and that should pop out a number. Essentially what we wanna know is like, how many years worth of assets do you currently have built up? Right?

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Jake Elm: For example, like let’s say you had a million dollar net worth. Lemme, lemme spend some numbers. Yeah, let’s just do that million dollar net worth and you spent $100,000 a year in personal spending. That would be like a 10 tt, right? You have 10 years worth of spending built up how much you need to make work. Optional, is about 25 to 30,

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Jake Elm: Is our broad number. 25 to 30 times your annual spending is a really good, just general back of the napkin. What do I need to get to and retire? If you can get to that point. Essentially you can invest your money in such a way that you can live off the gains every single year without dipping into the principle. And theoretically, you could live indefinitely right off of that money. You do not need an active income. what else do I need to add there,

Matt Mulcock: Well, so, so, so two ways to look at this, to keep it really straightforward. I love the example you just gave, but, uh, net worth divided by annual spending. The so that it’s gonna give you a number. The other way you can look at this is if you know generally how much you spend, you can multiply that number by 25 to 30, somewhere in that range. Start with 25. We like to say 30 ’cause it’s, it’s more conservative. But let’s just say you start with 25, that’ll give you an idea of the amount you need to make work optional. So again, two different ways to look at it, just depending on how you wanna run the calculation. But I, I have found that sometimes that is, a easier way, especially for people listening to us talk about numbers. So like, if your example, um, let’s say you spend a hundred thousand dollars a year, right? Like right now in today’s dollars. You say, well, how much do I need in like usable net worth? 20 times 25, that’s gonna be $2.5 million. the other way you could do it, or if you go 30, it’s gonna be somewhere between 2.5 and $3 million.

I’ll just say really quickly on this, Jake, if you’re a dentist out there, basically double those numbers. The average dentist we work with spends about 200 grand a year. So you, if you’re just, if you’re just a dentist out there, if you’re a young dentist out there and you’re like, give me a general idea of where I should be. Think shooting for, it’s between five and $6 million.

Jake Elm: I think that’s great. Right now, what do dentists need to retire? If we wanted to paint with the broadest strokes possible five to $6 million. Right. It is about what you need, which that’s important. Talking about dentist skin is all based on your spending. Dentists make a lot more than the average American. That’s why you got into, that’s a reason why a lot of people get into dentist dentistry. What comes with that? Most dentists do spend more than the average American, and because you spend more, you do need more than the typical couple million dollars saved up for retirement. Like you said, again, five to six. Really good. Just general rule of thumb,

Matt Mulcock: It is funny. It’s funny, j Cow, every time we talk about any of this stuff, how simple, but not easy. But the simple truth is all of this always just comes back to spending. Like that’s really what it boils down to, right? Is like what lifestyle do you want? And are you willing to make trade offs on your lifestyle? Um, for the, like, if you want to retire faster, like if you’re someone out there be like, I gotta retire at, you know, 40 or 45, whatever, it’s like, great. The trade off there is either you gotta cut your, or you either gotta make and save a ton of money early on. or you need to cut your spending down a lot. Right. So it’s just, it’s just funny how all of this always pretty much just comes down to. You’re spending the lifestyle that you want, and again, the trade offs you’re willing to make.

Jake Elm: Yeah. Most people I think opt for the former option that you list ’em out, which is, okay, I need to get five to 6 million. I just need to make a lot of money to be able to save a lot. It’s really hard for us as humans to cut back spending. just looking at as many household budgets like we do. I mean, it’s very rare to see people. From one year to the next, decreased spending. It’s really tough. Not only, again, to be sympathetic, inflation impacts all of us. And groceries go up and gas and the things we’re buying always tend to increase over time with inflation. but it’s also, we just don’t like to cut back on our lifestyle once we get used to living a certain lifestyle.

Matt Mulcock: Well, and to your point, dentists make a lot of money and they’ve, you know, in all, I think in a lot of ways, and we, we have empathy for this. We totally get it. you know, are grinding for years, building up, taking on debt, becoming one of the most skilled professions in the country to, and then take on more debt to start a practice. And like we, we get it. We, we total, and then you start making a lot more money than the average person. W with that, for most people comes, you know, a bi, a bigger and better lifestyle. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think it’s just more like understanding what, what trade offs or what that means for you when it comes to the actual math equation of retirement.

Jake Elm: Yes. I, I think that’s a great point. Spending is not evil, right? Every dollar that we make will eventually be spent, right, either by or us or by, if we pass it on like it’s going to be spend avention. That’s the goal of money, to spend it on things that we enjoy and enhances our lives. I. It’s just we like to bring up this financial independence number to show the impact of spending on your finances, right? Where, okay, if you are going to increase spending, if you’re going to buy this new car or buy this new house, or take more vacations, whatever you’re doing, that could be great for you. We just wanna make sure you un understand the trade offs and that, okay? Every increase in spending. Is going to magnify how much more you need to save in the end. Right? If you wanna think about this, this is like a crazy way of framing it. Just, just with, again, from pure mass standpoint, is every $3,500 increase in spending per month adds a million extra dollars that you need to save in retirement. It’s kind of crazy to think about. I’ve like there’s, I’m sure all of us can think of things like, man, I could easily spend another three grand a month. There’s a million things that I could use. It’s like, okay, do that. That’s another million dollars you need to save up to replace that in retirement.

Matt Mulcock: Which is when you put it that way, it is, it is kind of crazy to think about and hopefully gives people, again, we, to your point, no way are we saying spending is evil. We think this money is the whole point of it is to spend, but when you put it in that light, in that framework, it’s, I think it’s kind of like, it is eye-opening, um, to, to think about of what it takes to like. Again, create that lifestyle that you want. Um, so let’s, let’s bring this to, to reality of saying, okay, you’re someone who’s considering, uh, selling, uh, your practice or, or within a certain amount of time, let’s say the next next few years, possibly transitioning out of, ownership and selling your practice, this simple framework we’re giving you. And one, one other thing I want to add to this, Jake and get your thoughts on, but one nuance here when we talk about, Net worth and retirement readiness and all this, there’s a distinction that I’d wanna make between usable and non-usable net worth. And so re really what that means is just your net worth that excludes your house, your personal residence is your usable net worth. And then your, your net worth, including your house would be, or your house in particular, we’d consider your non-usable net worth. Just meaning you’re not gonna sell your house. Go live on the streets and like you needed somewhere to live,

Jake Elm: You always have to have somewhere to live, not to discourage people out there, but yes, we like to have that net word number. Ideally exclude. Your primary residence or even like cabins that you have or any like personal property that you’re not using for income. That’s just like, Hey, I’m not selling this to fund financial goals. It’s the same with like a car or anything. They’re like, yes, technically that’s an asset, but you’re not selling a car to fund financial goals unless it is like a, you know, collectible maybe item that you could down the road, but it’s

Matt Mulcock: My old school Bronco, I will one day have, will be a collectible

Jake Elm: Yes. I’m not, side note, I’m not a huge car guy. I do think for some reason though, Ford Broncos look good to me and my eye, just like the boxy, like they look, they seem so cool and good looking. Coming from like a really, I’m not a car guy in the

Matt Mulcock: Neither.

Jake Elm: But when I see Broncos on the road, I’m like, I could, like, I could see myself driving that and

Matt Mulcock: There. They’re, so, I was just, just literally just got back from lunch with our guy Landon, on our team. And he is a total car guy. He’s, he just bought a 1988, four runner. He’s refurbishing re. Building, re, you know, painting and like doing the whole thing. 1988, that’s two years younger than me. it’s an old car and, uh, we were ta just talking about this and I’m not a car guy at all, but I’m like, it is a lifelong goal for me. One day, one day I will have. A secondary car, which is gonna be like an old, like, like a 1970s Bronco, like one of those old school refurbished Broncos. They’re not cheap. Um, but anyway, they’re not cheap. They’re like collectible cars. They’re like 150 plus grand. So we, we digress. so I, we wanted to make that distinction of the personal residence. And I like what you said, Jake, it’s not just your house, it’s gonna be like vacation properties, whatever. We’ve gotta be thinking about your usable net worth. So again, let’s say just for easy numbers, let’s say you figure out that, let’s say you’re usable net worth you have right now outside your home is $4 million. You’ve determined that you need about 5 million. To make this make work being optional. Well, it’s a really simple, relatively simple, you know, um, equation at that point to say, what can I sell my practice for? You gotta figure all that out after taxes and all that. What am I collect? What am I gonna take after that? Let’s say after everything, it’s a million bucks. Again, I’m just using really crude, really simple numbers here. Well now I’ve got $5 million usable net worth. So before you sell, you figured all that out. Rough estimate, you’re gonna be at 5 million. And you’re like, great, based on my spending, like we’re we’re there. So that’s how we would kind of use this framework to be thinking about, and that’s why it’s so critical to understand at least directionally what your retirement readiness number is.

Jake Elm: Exactly. I think that’s perfect. And for maybe there again, every scenario and every situation is gonna be a little bit different, but maybe there are people out there who are possibly selling to a DSL or maybe selling a practice before they’re like retirement age. Like I’m gonna sell maybe mid forties or mid fifties and I still plan on working for maybe 10 or 15 years after this.

Matt Mulcock: Talk to us. Before you do that, just

Jake Elm: Yes, please.

Matt Mulcock: Talk to us before you do

Jake Elm: But just with these numbers too, like to get to that number, you can say, okay, if I’m selling my practice for X amount of dollars, like let’s only have $2 million of net worth. I need to get to six. If I have 2 million, now I sell my practice for a million. You can kind of run the time value money calculations. Okay, if I sell this now, what’s that gonna grow to in 10 years? And does that get me then right to this 30 times annual spending. So you could also do, even if you’re not imminently retiring, you could do this math with, if I’m selling earlier type of

Matt Mulcock: Know what might be even easier than that, Jake is just call us and we’re, we’re happy to talk, we’re happy to walk you

Jake Elm: Can, yeah. It’s like we’ve tried to give, like, this is like the back of the napkin math year for you, but there are a lot of nuance and details to get into where it is nice to talk with someone about your specific situation and get, talk about actual dollar amounts. Right. Is is really

Matt Mulcock: And your own personal situation. So all jokes aside, we honestly, we talk to people about this kind of stuff. Weekly. So we would love to talk to you if you have any questions on that. So anything else you’d add to this, Jake, on, on just the overall kind of like total term or the retirement readiness number and how this relates?

Jake Elm: Maybe to step back a little bit into spending, just as we get off of this, of that 30 number, some people may be thinking out there. Okay, well listen, I um. I’m paying for kids’, private schools,

Matt Mulcock: I know what you’re gonna say.

Jake Elm: Um, I’m paying off some debt or I’m paying off my mortgage or things now, like my spending will go down in retirement. Like one I wanna stop working or semi practice, I’m going to significantly reduce my spending. And so that’ll like, I’ll have more room, right? Because my spending’s gonna go down in retirement. That may be the case. Studies though, would show that that is not true. Like across the board, people just tend to keep spending what they wore. What they did as they were working is when they’re not working. That’s because different expenses just come to the forefront, right? Let’s say you paid off your mortgage. Then it’s like, well, now I’m traveling maybe a little bit more. I want to go more places. Or the kids are now out of the house and now you have grandkids who still have birthdays and Christmases, and maybe the kids, they still keep asking you for like cars or you’re paying for college or like, there’s always expenses that come up with family and maybe different health expenses. You’re just gonna keep spending the same amount. So I would just avoid that thinking of, well, my spending’s high now, but in retirement is going to be lower. It’s just typically not the case.

Matt Mulcock: I love that you brought this up, Jake. I think this is such an important point and I think it’s, it’s actually really intuitive psych psychologically, if you think of it, of how this happens because. There’s a couple of different pieces you’ve already highlighted. Like it’s super easy to be disciplined in the future. Like I’m always on a diet in the future. I’m always eating

Jake Elm: Workout routine a year from now is amazing.

Matt Mulcock: I’m like, I’m so ripped in the future. It’s crazy. but, so it’s really easy to be disciplined in the future. The other part of this though, that just, again, psychologically, this makes total sense of how we look at money, so let’s just use as an example, the number one thing people always point to when it comes to like, my spending will be lower is their mortgage. Right. They, we run, they look at their RAM schedule or they know like, okay, this year my mortgage is dropping off. And it could be a sizable amount of money. It could be totally size, it could be five, six. Nowadays, it could be freaking 10

Jake Elm: As to say, nowadays, five 6,000 is pretty typical

Matt Mulcock: Yes. Let’s say it’s five, $6,000. So think about this though. This is just how humans bring all of us. We all think like this. When you’re spending those dollars on something for so long. Five or $6,000 and that now falls off. We tend to, I’m not saying there’s people out there listening, being like, no, I did it. I’m sure people did. But psychologically what we, all of us most likely will do is look at that as house money. We’re kind of looking at like, I was already spending it. It’s not, it’s not like we look at it as like it’s already been spent and so like, I’m just gonna reallocate that towards. My, like something else in the spending bucket. Now I’m just gonna travel more. Now I’m gonna go buy that Bronco, or I’m gonna go do whatever it is.

Jake Elm: Yeah, a lot of it’s that delayed gratification where it’s like, I’ve been delaying actually for a long time and this is my moment to actually spend some of this money.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. We very rarely, unless, unless maybe we can create awareness via like these conversations and people like shift. But very rarely do we take that money from the spend bucket and then be like, okay, now it’s going into like my investing and saving bucket. We just rarely do that, especially if you’re saving outside of what your mortgage already was. And we’re not saying there’s anything wrong with this. We’re just saying be honest with yourself. Chances are you’re not gonna reallocate that money to anything other than more spending

Jake Elm: I agree. and I think at every stage of life, there’s just new expenses that are gonna pop up that maybe we weren’t anticipating, right? Like just in my own case, I had young kids who are like, oh my gosh, we’re spending a ton on formula and a ton on diapers. So it’s like, oh, it’s gonna be so nice when we don’t have to do formula and diapers anymore. But once they’re done with that, then it’s okay, we’re doing sports activities, or they’re eating more now, or we have to buy new clothes. It’s the same like in retirement where my kids are gone, I don’t have to spend on them. But now it’s grandkids. And maybe they’re asking for bigger expenses and maybe they got laid off from a job and I’m helping folk them for a couple of months. Like there’s always gonna be family stuff and other expenses and healthcare, the things that’ll pop up, that’ll fill

Matt Mulcock: It’s so true. The, so, and you’re, to your point, studies back this up. Like you’re, you’re basically, your spending pre-retirement is gonna be your spending in retirement. For the most part. It’s the ranges that I’ve seen in these studies. I have seen in some cases it can go down. Depending on the age when you retire, but it’s anywhere from like 85 on the low end to like 110% of your pre-retirement spending, and it’s usually like the three year average leading into retirement, something like that.

Jake Elm: It does drop off eventually.

Matt Mulcock: It, it

Jake Elm: Of, this is like a different conversation of like usually like past 80, 85 spending actually tends to drop off a cliff almost what this most people encounter health issues or energy goes down,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake Elm: And family get busy. Spending does drop off at that point. But yes, at least in those first years, if you’re retiring, you know, if that 60 to 80 range your spending is gonna stay. Pretty

Matt Mulcock: And most likely go up. But, um, okay. I, I’m glad that we covered that. So, so first part of this framework, just understanding your retirement readiness. We, we also will say we understand the numbers we gave and the discussion we just had about this. I. Is broad, right? We we’re, we’re acknowledging that it’s general. You’re gonna want a lot more details when you’re actually getting into a place of your personal situation. Like you really will, you’re gonna want, and you can’t, you can’t know everything, but you’re gonna want to go into, like, I’ll just give a really quick example. Social security, like what does social security look like for you? Or what other income sources do you have? Um, what, what other things in your

Jake Elm: Are you selling your practice, but keeping the building and getting rent income from the building? Possibly,

Matt Mulcock: What, what personal things do you have going on in your family situation that might, like, there’s just so many things, but, um, so you will want to get much more detail than the numbers we gave, but we’re hoping this, at least directionally gives you something to be thinking about as you’re out there pondering a transition possibly. let’s jump into the, kind of the second part of this show as we, as we kind of wind down. Figuring or talking. And again, something that’s always top of mind for you and me. We, you and I talk about this stuff all the time, just kind of like, you know, we just in organic conversations, but the mistake we see, and we want to talk about the flip side of this, of like how to solve this is, um, being, being unclear, uh, as to why kind of the purpose behind transition. I think this has gotten. Even muddier Jake, um, with DSOs and private equity, they’re going after younger docs now they’re trying, you know, they’re trying to make this seem like, and in maybe in some cases it is pretty rare that it’s like a better fit, right? Like financially for these dentists to do it, to transition earlier and make it kind of like this partnership type thing. so I think it’s muddy the waters even more. But what are your thoughts just initially on this kind of idea of like this mistake of being unclear as to the why?

Jake Elm: No, I like, I wanted to touch on that, to your point of the, the waters have been muddied a bit in terms of like when and how to sell your practice from this influx of DSO and the corporatization of dentistry. I think if we look back a couple of decades ago, or even maybe just one decade ago, it was pretty much for most dentists was, Hey, I’m going to buy a practice. I’m gonna work in it for 20 to 30 years, then I’m gonna sell it kind of when I’m ready to retire, to stop working. Now. That is not the case. The reason, part of the reason why we’ve had to. Put out so much content and become more educated on this transitions process throughout your career is, like you said, DSOs are selling and people are looking to sell in the middle of their career, or 10 years in, or they’re looking to buy a practice and sell it. You know, it’s like there’s now no certain, like, I’m gonna work for 20, 30 years and then sell. People are pondering this transition kind of at all times, at all different stages of their, of their career.

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Jake Elm: And so, yeah, like I said, I think it’s a little more muddy, and this is when I think it becomes even more crucial to think about, okay, why am I doing this? Why did I get into dentistry in the first place? Why did I buy this practice in the first place? What am I wanting out of life? Like what? What’s an ideal lifestyle look like? For me, though, asking yourself those questions. I think on a. Pretty periodic basis can help cut through a lot of the crap that we see, right? Like inundation of all these different things. And here’s the numbers that DSOs are giving and not. So that’s what we wanted to focus on, is just being more intentional and asking, just keep asking yourself why all these questions, right?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. I think get incessant with yourself. Honestly, if get incessant with, with why, the question, why, and continue to ask. Be that like, you know, you and I both have young kids be the be your five-year-old version of yourself. I have a 5-year-old daughter and it’s just, and my almost 4-year-old son, and it’s just constant. Why, why, why, why, why? It’s insane. But it’s so fun because they, I’ve, I’ve said this like I, I’ve joked about this. You, you think you know something. You think you understand a concept until your five-year-old pushes you on it, whether that be a definition of a word or just why you said to do, like, why you gave them a command, right? It’s like, well, why? So I joke, but also be that five-year-old version of yourself and continually ask yourself why. Um, I think as we, as we go through this, Jake, and kind of give reasons or things to be thinking about, the thing that I think of is, I don’t wanna ask you how like. Are you the person who was never thinking about this before, like all of a sudden some DSO reached out to you and like, and there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with being like, I wasn’t thinking about this before, but that should be a telltale sign right there if you were never even considering it and now some DSOs pitching you some like big numbers. Um, that should be a telltale sign that number one, it could just be about money, possibly, which again, nothing wrong with that, but just be thinking about it and even more of a sign. Of like, all right, before I make any life altering moves like this, I better spend a lot of time getting clear on this.

Jake Elm: I think that’s where we get into. Rough or scary waters is when we’re just thinking about the money aspect of, or the dollar signs here, which is funny, I think coming from financial advisors and people listen this podcast thinking like, well, it’s not the point. This, I, I was thinking about this this morning. part of your why thing. I just, I know I was mowing my lawn this morning and um, one of my boys asked me, dad, why are you mowing the lawn? And I kind of went down this whole rabbit hole of like. Like I fertilize

Matt Mulcock: Because I’m a, because I’m a father

Jake Elm: I’m like, yeah, I just light green, freshly cut grass. I don’t know why, but that’s just as you get into middle age and become a dad, it’s just the coolest thing is to have nice grass. And he, anyway, he did not quite understand that. but yes, when we’re thinking at this from a purely money standpoint is I think where we can get into trouble. Um, for example, I, this happens with personal finance too. Again, coming from personal financial advisors where. Corporate finance and personal finance, I think we can sometimes muddy the two there, but like the, the goal of corporate finance really is like, can we make as much money as possible as efficiently as possible? Right? That’s like most businesses, like, how can we do that? I think most people take that attitude to their personal finances, where it’s like, I don’t really know what my goals are, but I just wanna make a lot of money as fastly and as efficiently as possible. that’s not how personal finance should work, right? It is really not because there is no reward for being the richest person in the graveyard. There’s no, like, once you reach a certain network level, no one is coming, being like, you’re the coolest person ever. The whole point of making money on a personal level, hopefully, is to just use it as a tool to live the life that we want.

It’s like we just need to make this money to facilitate doing the things that bring me joy in fulfillment to maybe help others, you know, help others, whatever that is for you. And so I think that could be the same thing when selling a dental practice. We can use that same aspect. There is, okay, I’m selling and obviously we need to pay attention to the financial standpoint. Obviously we need to know those numbers and make sure that’s nailed down. But really we need to look at it from why am I doing this and how was, how was me selling my practice? Helping me get to a better place in my life or to where I want to be. Right. And I think that’s like you almost, you do have to lead with that rather than just the money standpoint to really have a satisfactory and good transition. Do you agree?

Matt Mulcock: A hundred percent agree. I think there’s, uh, you know, I think exactly what you said. I love the distinction you made between corporate and personal finance. I think there are some elements of corporate finance or, you know, kind of that rigidity of corporate finance that can get, can be brought into the personal side. So, for example, I think being like as organized as businesses are, I think it’s great. But I love what you just said and I think it’s so true. We see this with dentists of a, just not even acknowledging the difference, like the things you’re optimizing for, even as a practice owner, right? The things you’re optimizing for as a practice owner. On the corporate side of your, of your business or of your financial situation is, should be different than what you’re optimizing for on the personal side, even if there are some crossover things. I love that you made

Jake Elm: It’s just a different game, right? This is like

Matt Mulcock: Very

Jake Elm: Making as much money as possible isn’t a financial plan. It really isn’t. Like, that’s just not, ’cause that’s not gonna get you to a, a place where you’re feeling fulfilled or really happy in the end.

Matt Mulcock: Well ’cause at, at the end of the day, like. I think the more likely scenario is, if that’s your goal, that’s what you’re saying is your goal. it sends up kind of some red flags for me of just saying like, what, what game are we playing here? Like, are we playing the actual wealth game? Which, which is a game that you define yourself, that you, everyone can win because everyone’s got their own definition of what that means. Or are you playing the game of status chasing and you just want to be able to like, you know, have the, be able to like. Drive the fancy car, show it off or what, or whatever, or just, you’re just so competitive. You’re like, I just have to be richer than some person I have in my, like, I just think being really careful of what game you’re playing and getting really clear on that is, is a huge part of this process.

Jake Elm: I also think this is cool when we think of the frames of, okay, what game am I playing and what game is my neighbor playing? Or what game is my dental community playing where I had another dentist down the street who just sold to this big company for X amount of reasons, and I think I should do that. But maybe he’s doing that for completely different reasons than you should be doing that. Right. I,

Matt Mulcock: Oh, go ahead Jake. I, I got something, but go ahead.

Jake Elm: I was reading a Morgan Housel. I, you know, we talk about

Matt Mulcock: Sent it to the team right?

Jake Elm: Yeah. He was kind of talking about this today, and I just wanted to read this from him, which I thought was actually, I think, pertinent to this conversation, which is he says, if you have no strong views on what kind of life you want to live, I. Who you are, what you desire, what makes you happy, what doesn’t you’re likely to mimic, the most visually appealing person you come across, right? Maybe the person with the biggest house, the fastest car, maybe the nicest practice, the person who sold for the highest, multiple, whatever it is. Um, he’s like, that may work, may work, that may not. That’s why it’s so vitally. Vital to can constantly reflect on who you want to be, what kind of life you wanna live. Are you on an in independent path versus just chasing someone else’s dream. Right? That kind of comes down to this words. You really have to, we just have to be introspective about this. He also, there’s a quote from Christopher Morley where he says, the only, there was only one success, and it’s to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Jake Elm: That’s really it. So it’s like, I would think about this as you’re going to sell your practice. Like, how is this helping me live the life I wanna live? Start with that

Matt Mulcock: And, and by the way, just while we’re talking about this, like, I’m not kidding you how much, how much empathy I have for people who might be hearing this and being like, cool. But that’s really hard. Like I’m like, it’s so hard,

Jake Elm: Thanks for bringing this up. I wonder sometimes when they get on this like little soapboxy maybe where we maybe sound out of touch or like not recognizing how human and how frail we all are with

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, dude, it, it is so hard. Like I’ve had, I’ve had, uh, I’ve had a run in my, I’ve had some stuff going on in my life personally for, for a few years now, and I can just say like being able to define for, for myself, I’ll just speak for myself. I have been through this existential process for literally probably five to seven years now. I’m still not there. Like I’m still struggling with it and I still have swings and still have all these, like all this like, you know, I think what you’re alluding to is like mimetic desires. Right. The one thing I was gonna say, whenever this stuff comes up, I think, um. There’s a book I, I cannot recommend enough by a guy named Luke Burgess called Wanting, um, um, Morgan Housel, I think has referenced to this as well, but, uh, he, he or the original work is done by a guy named Renee Gerard, but it’s all about mimetic desire, and it’s exactly what you just read there, Jake, of like, until you get really clear of your own personal goals, desires, values, what, what makes a good life for you, until you can get clear on that. All we’re gonna do is copy everyone else because, and it, and once you read this book, I’m not kidding you, it’s one of those things that you’re like, you see it everywhere. It’s like we’re all just copying each other. Because I don’t think that, and I speak myself too, like it’s a really hard, and it takes constant effort to be continually recalibrating around this idea of like, what do I even really want? It’s hard.

Jake Elm: I’m so happy you brought that up. ’cause yeah, I, this is something that I don’t think anyone has figured out 100% of exactly what we want all the time. We’re bad at that as humans. I was actually, the other day, we were, I was talking with family and we were talking about how my boys, when they’re playing with toys, they do not want a toy until the other one has it. Right. They don’t care about it until the other one has it. And we were laughing like, oh, kids are so dumb. Why do they do this? They’re so irrational. I’m like. Wait a second.

Matt Mulcock: That’s us.

Jake Elm: How many times have we seen adults like, oh, I’m kind of living my life. Fine. Wait, my neighbor got an Audi car. Now I’m going, that’s what I want. He got a boat and so now I’m like, Hey, do we need a boat? Like we didn’t even think about it until they had it. I’m like, we are all just grown children. Right? Kind of when it comes

Matt Mulcock: We are. Yes.

Jake Elm: And so yeah, we do this all the time. If we don’t have clearly to defined what we want, maybe, you know, we can get swayed by other people’s dreams and desires again. But to your point, Matt, yes, this is something that no one has figured out a hundred percent. I just think we gotta keep talking about it and bringing it up so hopefully we can get a little bit better

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. To your point, acknowledging like, we don’t, we’re not sitting here like we’re, we’re in this with you. Like, right. Like we’re in this with you saying, dude, I’m acknowledging like this is freaking hard and I battle this almost daily, this, this, this exact thing. Some form or fashion of it. Um, so I think maybe with that, let’s, I think it might be helpful, Jake, to give some practical exercises that we’ve shared. At other places we’ve spoken, we’ve talked about on this podcast, but I think there’s some practical things to be doing that anyone out there listening can actually do to maybe get and should be doing. I think on a re relatively regular basis, to get really clear on this, the two things I’m referring to, two different exercises one of them is called values exercise. And you can just google this. Um, you can just Google values, core values, exercise or core, core values, exercise like sheet. And all you do is you print off a sheet. There’s also cards you can get, but just make it simple. You just get a sheet and you go through three simple rounds, round number one. So all the sheet is, is like a list of like. 50, 60, whatever, 70 different core values, and they’re just words, right? And you, all you do is round one. You just go through and you just circle whatever resonates with you. That’s it. Just, just really simple. Take five minutes, circle and or cross out the ones that don’t resonate.

Whatever you want to do. You’ll be left at the five minutes with a list. You know, you’ve, you’ve narrowed it down to whatever, let’s say 25, 30, whatever, round two, you narrow the list down to 10, so you cross out the other ones. And then round three, you get it down in my mind. Jake, I don’t know how you feel about this. I want to get your thoughts, but in my mind, I think it should come down to like no more than five. I think it should be more like three to five, somewhere in that range. That’d be the last, like what are the three or to five things that are most important to me in my life? I. I’ll just get your thoughts on that first before we go to the

Jake Elm: No, I, no, I think that’s fantastic because yeah, I, you wanna try and keep this as simple and straightforward as possible, so we don’t wanna have 15 different values and you’re trying to split your money between all these different things. Like No, really try and get clear on what is most important to me, and again, to our conversation before. What is most important to me right now, and it can change over time, right? This is not like set in stone. This is gonna matter to me over the next 20 years, but it’s like right now what is most important? And if I can keep revisiting this on a periodic basis, maybe things shift in and out and we, you can allocate appro, you know, appropriately there.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yeah, they can totally change. And you should be doing this, like you said, semi-regularly. The other exercise is something very similar, but I think you should just take a question and there’s four different forms of this question that you can take. Um, one that we like is just, why is money important to me? another que form of that question could be something like, what role does money play in my life? Whatever you want to. But I think why is money important to me is, is probably the, is a great way to start right at the top of a piece of paper. You take five to 10 minutes round one. Answer the question. It doesn’t matter what you say, just write to yourself. I don’t care if you write one page, two page, five pages. Just write what, why is money important to me? Just write it out. stop, reflect, maybe read it back. Hopefully you’re doing this maybe with a partner or your spouse. Round two, take five to 10 minutes. Your job, your goal in round two is to cut it in half. So if you wrote two pages, get it down to one. If you wrote a page or get it half whatever, get it shortened down. Round number three, get it down to no more than like one sentence. So that’s the goal is like, get this down to like what? So I think the values kind of primes the pump gets you to a mindset of like, okay, my, and what we call this is statement of financial purpose. This is like. Why am I even, again, it’s answering your question. Why? Why am I doing this?

Jake Elm: Yeah. We’re just trying to give you tools here just to like spur some introspection, right? That’s like this framework to spur some introspection and bringing this back maybe a little to the. Okay, why do I wanna sell my dental practice? Is you need to identify that cause too, right? And that could be a lot of different things. I think sometimes we see those mid-career dentists who are swayed by the DSO offer. Again, we are not anti DSO by any means. You know, we talked about that in, in our first pod, but some we’ve seen it go wrong sometimes for the mid-career dentists selling the DSOs. We’ve seen some bad outcomes there. Um, a lot of times, yeah, just identify why do you wanna sell?

Like, it could be like, am I feeling fatigue? Am I burnt out? Am I struggling with my staff? Like, am does my hand hurt? Does my back hurt? Like, identifying that first thinking just by, just by doing this introspection, you could say, okay, well do I have to sell to avoid that thing or to fix it, you know, maybe there are different alternatives. Maybe I can bring in an associate to take some work off my plate. Maybe I can. Hire, fire better team members and work on that. Maybe I can implement systems that make my life a little bit easier. There are so many things you can do, like by identifying the problem rather than just saying, man, dentistry kind of stinks for me right now and I wanna get out of it. Um, you know, so we just want you to explore all these reasons and figure out a path that that works for you.

Matt Mulcock: Can, can I, I love VE J. Can I throw something out and get your thoughts? This may be controversial, but I want to throw it out and just skew your thoughts. I have a general rule. Speaking of kids, we bring a lot of parenting advice here today.

Jake Elm: We’re in the throes of it. You just talked about

Matt Mulcock: We’re in the middle of

Jake Elm: Kid stuff all weekend and we’re Yeah. It’s, it’s top of mind.

Matt Mulcock: I have a general rule or guideline, something that’s kind of been evolving over the last few years with my kids, especially my daughter. My son’s probably a little too young for this, but my daughter’s going on six, starting to play sports. And one of my general kind of rules, I think, I think I’m saying, I think ’cause I’m still fluid and flexible and I’m fixed on this, but generally I’m kind of, found this again, this kind of guideline I’m following, which is, Hey, you’re not allowed to quit on your bad days. So she was having a rough day with soccer or something, and, um, she like didn’t wanna go to practice or whatever, and she wanted to quit because she was just having an emotional bad day. And I was like, no, you’re not allowed to quit on your bad days. Like if you wanna walk away from something on a good day. You’re just for, because I think your, your, your mind is so much clearer if like, oh yeah, it’s a good day. I’m just ready to move on to do something else. Like I think generally speaking, if you’re a dentist out there, you just said it like, I’m just burned out. I’m frustrated with my staff. Like whatever. I think generally I. I’d tell someone like, no, you’re not allowed to quit on a bad day. Like, go out on top if you’re gonna do this, but don’t quit out of reaction or fear or burn being burned out. I think there’s a lot of other things you can do to fix those things. Is that, is that controversial? Jake, what are your, what are your

Jake Elm: No, that is not controversial. I think that’s a pretty good rule of thumb for most things in life, where it’s almost just like the. With most of the decisions we make, we wanna try and take emotion out of it if we can in the moment, like try and be again, we wanna, we wanna try and find the balance between being analytical and also being, you know, like driven by like how does this help me personally? But yeah, I feel like when we make a lot of bad decisions in life, it has become, because we’re doing a spur of the moment emotional type of decision. Instead of just being like, let’s take a break, can we sleep on this? Or maybe give it a couple of weeks or whatever and tackle the problem and usually. Usually there is a way to tackle this problem, you know, different anyway.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Can I get a, can I give one more thing on this? I know we’re, we want to wrap up here pretty soon, but, um, one last thing I want to give on this, maybe another framework. Hopefully we’re not like inundating people too much. Hopefully it’s simple enough that we’re, you know, people might be listening.

Jake Elm: I like this and so it is great for me. As long as I’m liking it, I’m on board.

Matt Mulcock: But this is our show. We can talk about what we want. Um, so this came from another book, Greg, uh, Greg McKeen. He wrote a book called Essentialism, another fantastic book. But I took something from that book that I’ve never forgotten, and I think it applies to this kind of stuff. All the, uh, perfectly, any big decision you have. And I’ve used this with clients a ton. It’s anytime you’re battling something like this. My framework on this is if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. Like if you don’t have a full body, like, hell yes, this is time to sell my practice. It’s a no because I, I think your intuition, like the quote unquote gut feeling, after all the numbers are done, all the numbers are run, all the spreadsheet stuff’s done, you know, you know, all you, you, you have all the information, all the head stuff’s done. I think it comes down to just like, what’s your body telling you? Is this a hell yes, or is it a no? What are your,

Jake Elm: Yeah, I am. I am with you. ’cause I think sometimes we do, again, going back to like personal finance and going back to selling your practice, I think they can be one and the same as we’re thinking about this, which is we sometimes think it’s a hard science, right? Where it’s like I, this is the exact right time to sell my practice and this is the exact right person to sell it to. And I can just tell you right now, let, that’s like never going to be the case. It’s always, we can run the numbers, we can do the spreadsheets. Here are the trade-offs, here are the pros and cons, and there’s always gonna be a little bit of a gray area. I. When you’re making this decision, right, always with most personal finance decisions, whether this is buying a house, selling a pr, most decisions, yes, there is no, but that’s again, going back to the corporate finance versus personal finance. There’s just not a hard science with a lot of this. It is much more behavioral and emotional and right time and right place. And so that’s what I would emphasize here is if people came to this podcast, like, I’m hoping they’re just gonna tell me exactly when to sell my practice. That’s impossible. And what you need to embrace is that there will be no perfect time betaine to keep thinking about it and you know, trying to figure out, okay, what makes the most sense for me? And there’s always gonna be trade offs associated with it.

Matt Mulcock: Jake, I love so much that you said that ’cause it’s maybe, again, maybe simple and obvious, but so true. You’ve, we’ve gotta get out of this mind. I say we, ’cause again, we’re in this with you. Like I’ve, I struggle with this too. We’ve gotta get out of this solutions kind of mindset. Like meaning there is a solution to this, there is a right or wrong way to do this. To your point. No, it’s a trade off mindset. There’s just, that’s all we’re doing. We’re just making trade offs. Um, and you’ve gotta just kick. Or get clear on those things. Um, anything else, Jake, you want to add on the why or just kind of anything else we’ve talked about here on this? The second half of this part?

Jake Elm: Um, maybe that, uh, this could have been part one.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake Elm: Know, we have a part one and a part two

Matt Mulcock: We screwed

Jake Elm: To emphasize this, which is we, I think we, we went over maybe a little more technical things on the first part, which are, you know, important to understand and know, but you really do need to lead with the conversation we had today. Honestly, like I would lead with this part first, and then you can get more detailed on the financial side of things

Matt Mulcock: Well, this is helpful for me ’cause I’m speaking on this topic this weekend, so now I’m gonna lead with this.

Jake Elm: Yeah. I just think, again, it seems, I know like as we’re going through this, as people are experiencing this, dentists are experiencing this, it’s, it’s nice to be like, okay, I just want an answer. Here’s my struggles and I want the exact answer to be outlined here. But it is a lot more, it is more mushy gushy than that, unfortunately. Um, and there’s no exact right answer. And so leading with this stuff can just help maybe with the finance and the number stuff

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Love it. Um, I’m gonna just end with this. There’s a few different questions that, uh, again, shout out to Jake for this Egu that we, uh, I say we, it was between Jake and our marketing team. I did nothing. I’m just here. but in this egu, you can find it@dennisadvisors.com. full egu on this exact topic. Uh, but there’s a, I wanna just hit. Really quick, I want to throw out these questions to be thinking about. So, uh, number one, what is your primary reason for selling? And there’s a lot of questions underneath that. Like, Jake, you mentioned. Are you burned out? Are you just stressed? Are you looking for more free time? Like, I think it’s getting really clear on that. Number two is what type of buyer are you interested in? So are you looking to sell to a DSO? Are you looking to transition to associates, whatever it may be. Uh, number three. Are, are there, I love this one. Are there any alternatives to selling? I think that’s really big. So again, if you’re burned out, if you’re stressed, if you’re just like fatigued, well okay. Is selling the only way to achieve like solving that or are there other things that you can be looking at there? I.

Jake Elm: The reason we bring this up too, just if we wanna get into the nitty gritty finance side of this, is you build wealth over time by having equity and assets that grow, right? And so owning a dental practice, owning a business is a really important way to build wealth. You wanna hold on almost to as much equity as you can or as feasible for you. And so I always just like to bring this up is remember like people are buying your practice for a reason. It’s usually gonna be good financial prospect for them in the future, whether this is an individual or a DSO. And so like selling your practice can, most people are going to eventually get to that point and it can be a good thing, but really contemplate it because owning equity is how you build wealth over time. And I would just be, make sure if you’re giving that up, it’s for a good reason.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yeah, definitely. And generally speaking, speaking of owning equity, you’re usually going to be paid a higher premium, we’ll call it. For an illiquid asset, like a private business. And we see this in dentistry all the time. So to your point, Jake, just be really, really clear on, even on the financial side as if it makes sense or if there’re all are alternatives.

Speaking of alternatives, really quick, I wanna reference this. I think it’s a p pertinent time, episode 5 98. If you, it’s the first episode that we released in 2025. I cannot recommend this episode enough. And it’s not, ’cause I was on, not even close. I was, I could have just been silent. But, Dr. Michelle Jorgenson, the, the title is Alternatives to DSOs and she so much knowledge she shares about the different ways or different things to be thinking about as far as the alternatives to, to selling in general. So something to, to listen to there. Um, the other two questions that I wanted to just finish with, what does life look like after selling the practice? And then kind of the same type of question is like, what are you retiring to? we’ve said this a lot, Jake, but I think, uh, one of another general big mistake that dentists and people make in general is we think investing is only money, but it’s like, what other things are you investing in your life to set up your life after transition? So hobbies. Sense of purpose, your social network, like these are things that you gotta be thinking about that if you don’t, there’s a lot of things in retirement that can come back and get you, that you’re not even thinking about. Um, when it comes to, again, mental, emotional health and things like that, again, sense of purpose is huge.

Jake Elm: We,

Matt Mulcock: Um,

Jake Elm: We always say life is short, which I think is a good thing to keep in mind, just to remember to live in the present. But other times life can be long. I think, you know, if you are, you know, if we’re retiring at 60, 65, you could live another 40 years.

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Jake Elm: Right. I mean, that’s a long time to not be wearing the practice of like make sure you know what, yeah. Like what you’re retiring to. What is your day’s going to look like? Giving up that big part of you. What are you then moving on to after that?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. A lot, Jake, you’re right. We probably should have started with this part one, but hopefully it was, hopefully it was helpful. If it was helpful, we would love for you to share this episode with, uh, a friend. If you have a dentist out there, uh, that needs to hear this, maybe it’s a, maybe it’s a business partner or just a friend from school. We’d love for you to share the episode if you got something of value out of it. Um, we wanna, would love to spread the, the word we, we love educating and we love having these conversations. And again, we only ever have two goals, which is add value number one, first and foremost, and then hopefully have some fun. Hopefully it’s fun to listen to. So, Jake, any other final words as we wrap up, uh, part two of the transitions discussion.

Jake Elm: No, I actually don’t think, I think I, I’ve talked a lot here. I, I’ve, I’ve said

Matt Mulcock: We both yapped. We both yapped a lot. Yeah. Again, hopefully there was some nuggets of, of value

Jake Elm: Yeah, I had a great time, so I think this is awesome.

Matt Mulcock: Perfect. As long as you and I have fun and we got something out of it and we’re like, hope, you know, hopefully that was someone else to do. If you like conversations like this, I have a feeling you would like the Dentist Money Summit coming up June 20th and 21st. Uh, it’s coming down to the wire. Jake, we were just talking with the team, uh, earlier this morning. We had, I’m not kidding you, it was kind of crazy how many signups we had over the weekend. Like we’re building momentum here as we go down the final stretch. Uh, by the time this episode comes out, my guess is we’re gonna be about, I mean, we already are, what, like two months out or no less than that. Um, which

Jake Elm: Less than two months.

Matt Mulcock: Less than two months out, which is wild. So, uh, come, come out. We’d love to have you at, park City, June 20th and 21st. The Dennis Money Summit. The theme is planned for the present. Come hang out with the DA team. It’d be a lot of fun. So

Jake Elm: It’s helpful when selling a practice to talk to other people who are planning on selling or

Matt Mulcock: I was gonna say, yeah.

Jake Elm: Be a lot of people there. You know, that’s sometime dentistry can be isolating. One of the purposes of this event not only is for us to meet you and to talk face to face with the people we work with, but sometimes it’s nice just to gather with other dentists and just pick their brain and what they’re doing, what they’re struggling with, and this applies to that.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, definitely. So check it out, dentistmoney summit.com. You can also check out dentistadvisors.com. Jake, Jake, thanks you for being here. Everyone. Thanks for listening. Till next time, bye-bye.

Keywords: dentistry, practice transitions, financial independence, dental practice sale, wealth management, selling practice, financial motivations, corporate finance, success, self-discovery, decision making, alternatives to selling.

Practice Transitions, Retirement Plans